Patricia Thomas Scheuer was born in California and is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley in which city she received her first vocal training. After completion of her degree at the University, and wishing to concentrate on French art song, she spent four years in Paris studying primarily the works of Debussy, Ravel, Fauré and Duparc, but also French opera roles. Through the poetry of this great song literature she acquired a life-long love of and fluency in the French language; and through the introduction to operatic repertoire became increasingly interested in the dramatic possibilities of her profession.

These were the years when the United States and the Soviet Union were vying to out-do one another in Europe by sending out (mostly young) artists to represent their countries’ cultural superiority. While still a student, Ms. Thomas Scheuer was contracted to present concerts under the sponsorship of the American Embassy in Paris and the United States Information Sevices (USIS). These recitals consisted of traditional recital repertoire, and always included songs of contemporary American composers. She now began to appear in recitals of contemporary music by composers who were her friends and colleagues, in France, Switzerland and  in Germany, and appeared as soprano soloist in oratorios in France and Belgium. There were also programs at the French Radio of primarily contemporary music; her programming of modern music became a  lifetime commitment.

A growing interest in opera and the opportunities presented by the excellent German theater/opera world convinced Ms. Thomas Scheuer to relocate to Vienna. A new language and a very different but also fascinating culture. She found fine training in opera (Verdi in German!), in fact, everything in German, and in spite of great concentration on learning roles, of course studied Lieder as well, the songs of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Strauss, and Hugo Wolf. Here also, was the USIS, wanting to send out young singers, and she did stage work for the first time, -  in American Musicals - first in a theater in Vienna and then on tour throughout Austria. There were also tours of Germany’s “Amerika Häuser” of serious recital repertoire, just before she signed her first opera contract with the Stadttheater of Bonn. There followed immediately contracts in other German and Austrian Opera Houses: Ulm, Salzburg, Graz, Lübeck , Frankfurt, Wuppertal, and in Holland, at Amsterdam with the Netherlands Opera, as well as in all of the other principal cities of Holland.

Ms. Thomas Scheuer’s repertoire, after twelve years of singing leading roles with European opera companies, is not only very extensive, but extremely many-sided, ranging from lyric roles such as Nedda, Fiordiligi, Arabella, Ellen Orford  and Marguerite, to the great Verdi heroines: Aida, Leonore-Trovatore and Desdemona, to the  very heroic figures of Senta, Elizabeth-Tannhäuser and Fidelio. In such varied roles, reviewers found that she  exhibited not only a beautiful, expressive soprano, but exceptional dramatic power.

On her return to the United States Ms. Thomas Scheuer took a teaching position at Ball State University in Indiana where she headed the Department of Voice and Keyboard for many years.  She taught undergraduate and graduate voice majors, directed in the opera program and chaired numerous master’s and doctoral committees.  Her students have made successful careers in teaching and performance in the United States, Europe and Japan.

At present she accepts students at her private studio in El Cerrito, California.